


Secret Treaties

by eva_roisin



Series: All These Stories Are True [4]
Category: Avengers Academy, X-23 (Comic), X-Force (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Betrayal, F/F, Femslash, Lost Love, Recreational Drug Use, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Rivalry, Unrequited Love, sniktblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-12
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-19 05:40:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/880079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eva_roisin/pseuds/eva_roisin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here is a story Laura never told anyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place after the concluding issue of Avengers Academy and before Daken’s death in Uncanny X-Force.
> 
> I wrote this fic because I was unsatisfied with Daken’s Uncanny X-Force run and rather gratuitous death. I also wanted to throw him together with Laura and offer an explanation for his out-of-character pre-mortem behavior (i.e. his bizarre sentimentality, the fact that he seemed to be on a suicide mission, etc.). 
> 
> This fic is set after Laura has discovered that Finesse used her to kill Jeremy Briggs but before she gets kidnapped in Avengers Arena.
> 
> Title is taken from the gloriously named (and downright glorious) Blue Öyster Cult album, which has a narrative of its own:
> 
>  
> 
> _I’m after rebellion; I’ll settle for lies._

I.

 

Here is a story she never told anyone: In the months before Daken died, Laura became his friend.

This happened after summer was over—and after she had discovered how Finesse had betrayed her. This happened in the days and weeks after the Academy was dissolved. This happened between Daken’s two “deaths”—the first death a fake, the second death real.

This happened out in the open, but no one knew about it. No one noticed, and no one asked. A few times each week, she left the Academy to go see him. She always signed out; she didn’t sneak around. She’d go into the city to meet him; she would ride her bike to downtown Los Angeles and meet him at a bar or a coffee shop, or sometimes at a park. Sometimes they met during the day, and sometimes they would go out at night. A few times they went to clubs and drank until the bartenders stopped serving. A few times they went back to his apartment and she slept on his couch, leaving just before it was light.

Another thing she never told anyone, including him: After he supposedly died the first time—the time in New York when he pretended to blow himself up—Laura had dreams about him. In her dreams he’d come to the foot of her bed and awaken her by tugging at her feet. _Hey enemy_ , he’d say, smiling.

 _I thought you were dead_ , she’d tell him, and in the dream she could see the outline of his body and the silhouette of his hair—but nothing else.

 _I’m not dead. I never was. My death was a beautiful forgery. I beat it. I beat the cancer. Tell Logan I’m coming for him_.

The dreams felt so real she mistook them for night terrors. She thought about telling someone about them, but she worried that she’d seem more unstable than ever before. And after all, a dream was nothing.

 _Hey enemy_ , Daken would tell her in the night, _prepare yourself. The battle that is coming won’t make a sound_.

Of all the dreams she’d ever had, this is the only one that almost came true. 

***

But that wasn’t how she learned he was still alive. She knew better than to believe a dream. Instead, he got in touch with her on the internet.  

Summer was over. Weeks before, she had killed Jeremy Briggs. Or rather: she had been led to believe that she had killed Briggs. Now she knew the truth: Finesse had taken her inert, unconscious body and used her claws to cut into him, severing his major arteries.

At first, the truth had stunned her, shook her, changed her— _her_ , the girl who’d been killing people since she was old enough to ride a bicycle. She understood well enough how Finesse could have used her to kill Briggs—there had been opportunity and motive. Briggs was a bad person, and he probably deserved what he got. If Laura had been conscious at the time, then perhaps she would have been the one to give it to him.

But how Finesse had concealed the truth from Laura—that was the thing that made Laura wince. It wasn’t that Finesse had _lied_. It was that she had lied so impeccably. Until the day of the football game, she hadn’t once slipped. She hadn’t said anything. She had lived beside Laura, slept beside her, eaten with her—and she had never once seemed sorrowful or doubtful or nervous. She’d never gone quiet during a conversation. Even when Laura made a fraught, late-night confession to Finesse—even when she admitted that she was maybe still a little bit in love with Jubilee—Finesse had not offered her own admission in return as an act of solidarity or contrition. She had never smelled guilty.

 _That_ , Laura thought. That was the thing.

Even that morning, the morning of the game, she’d been in bed with Laura. They’d had sex twice. The second time Laura had held Finesse’s hands over her head and pressed her against mattress. Ever since Briggs, she’d grown sexually ravenous—and aggressive. Sometimes she pulled Finesse into an empty room just to mess around with her. Sometimes she shoved her against walls, or kissed her hard enough to break skin. Finesse never said anything; she never complained. Even on the morning of the football game, she stared up at Laura unblinking as Laura pinned her down and ground against her until she came.

 _You don’t know anyone_ , Laura thought now. _You can’t know anything about anyone._

So, this is what she was thinking about when Daken messaged her. She was sitting in the computer lab, trying to distance herself from her own crushing anxiety, when she logged onto Facebook to find that she had a friend request from someone she didn’t recognize: Lester something-or-other. The profile picture was of a puppy, the network New York.

She clicked into the profile. Past employer: Avengers. Date of birth: 1946. Occupation: Independent contractor. Hometown: Sendai. _Daken_. Either Daken was still alive, or someone was pretending to be him. But why would someone pretend to be Daken by calling himself Lester?

She knew a couple facts about Daken’s death. First of all, she knew that he’d been dying of cancer—a result of some drug he was taking that suppressed a healing factor. Wolverine told her all about the drug—he told her to avoid it as long as she lived.

Second, she knew that he’d blown himself up, but that they had never found the body.

“But how do you know he’s dead then?” she’d asked Logan. He’d called her to tell her about it.

“He’s dead,” he’d said, but his voice was gravelly and quiet and low. She knew he was searching for comfort that she couldn’t give him.

In that moment—in discovering that Daken had died—she felt no ache of regret, and no pinch of satisfaction. She didn’t harbor hatred for Daken—really, she didn’t. She didn’t pity him either. She felt nothing.

“But how do you _know_?” she said.

“I just do,” he snapped. (He was annoyed. She’d annoyed him—as usual.) “Look,” he said, and then he paused. “It’s not for you to worry about. Daken can’t hurt you now. He can’t hurt anybody. It’s not an ending we didn’t expect. But I just wanted to let you know”—he paused again—“that you don’t have to be lookin’ over your shoulder anymore.”

Except, apparently, that she did. Daken had been there the whole time, watching and waiting.

She took her phone out of her pocket and searched for Logan’s number, trying to ignore the thudding of her heart. Logan would know what to do, tell her how to proceed.  

But she paused a second, her finger on the call button. Obviously Logan _didn’t_ know what to do. If he did, then he’d have stopped the situation from arriving at this point. Moreover, if Daken was alive—if he was truly trying to contact her—she needed to know _why her_.

She could handle Daken on her own terms. She’d have to.

She turned her attention back to the computer. Heart beating in her fingers, she accepted his request. _Hey enemy_ , she thought.

Then she waited. She refreshed her page. She trawled the internet, searching police records, looking for evidence of Daken’s existence. She didn’t find anything.

Ten minutes later, her inbox dinged. _Want to catch up? Meet me in Barsndall Park, north side of the fountain. 6 pm. We’ll chat. D._  

***

She spent that afternoon canvassing the school’s grounds, scenting the wind, checking for anything that seemed out of place. Now she knew that Daken was alive, she had reason to be on guard. Would he come here? What if he tried to hurt her friends? Or worse—what if he’d managed to get his hands on the trigger scent? She had a vision of herself killing everyone at the Academy—her teachers and schoolmates, even the staff—leaving them all in a huge bloody pile. Daken would laugh about it. She could already see him there, laughing in the background, or getting everything on camera for posterity.

But no, it wouldn’t come to that. She’d put him down if she had to, finish the work that Logan hadn’t had the stomach to do. She didn’t doubt that she could get away with it. If her experience with Briggs taught her anything, it was that people always expected the worst of her. They really did think that she was the sort of girl who killed people while unconscious. Even Gambit, who had once told her that she’d changed more than any other person he’d ever met—so much that it shocked him, and he’d seen everything—assumed that she’d killed Briggs. He didn’t even ask her if the story was true.

 _That_ , Laura thought. That was how Finesse had gotten away with the whole damn thing.

Usually when she walked around the school grounds she thought of Finesse, or she thought of Jubilee. She’d loved Jubilee first when she’d met her in Paris; they’d grown closer with each passing month. Then something happened. Jubilee went back to her island, back to her vampires and said to Laura: _It’s better this way_. And she didn’t talk to Laura anymore. Just as Laura no longer spoke to Finesse.

But on this afternoon, Laura thought of Daken. She remembered the last time she’d seen him—in Madripoor. She remembered how he’d handed her over to Colcord to be tortured. They’d locked her in a box for three days, standing upright, her wrists suspended above her head. During that time her period started. She could do nothing about it—nothing but stand there and bleed. Cramps rolled through her body and she couldn’t even change position. People—other girls, anyway—assumed that she didn’t experience cramps, that a healing factor somehow kept them at bay, or that she had a high tolerance for pain. They were wrong. Her cramps were terrible, and they were always the same. And pain medication, of course, didn’t help her.

On the second evening—though maybe it was morning, she couldn’t tell—she heard Daken come into the room and stand in front of the box. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t bother to suppress his scent either. And she got the sense—she got the distinct sense—that he was trying to decide something.  

Maybe he was deciding whether or not to free her. Or maybe he was deciding something else. She got the feeling that he could have raped her. Nothing was off the table; nothing was taboo as far as Daken was concerned. He could free her from the box and give her a hug, tell her that he’d always wanted a sister. Or, alternatively, he could open the box and rip her apart. With him, anything was possible. He didn’t have any loyalties. He wasn’t even for sale. To him, life was an endless train of gains and losses, of risks and rewards, of blissful entertainment.

She listened for him. It was no use trying to peer through the slat—Colcord’s people had made sure that she couldn’t see any light. As she stood there, she felt the air change. The breath left her body. Her pain sharpened. Her heart sped up. Fear—she was feeling fear. Crippling anxiety. Then: nausea. She leaned forward and vomited. The vomit splashed on her pants and boots.

She raised her head, seething and pained. Tears streaked from her eyes. Her nose ran.

She heard him chuckle. Then, whistling, he walked toward the door and left her there, left her in her own vomit.

That was Daken.   

When she finished making her rounds—checking the tennis court and the pool—she went back inside. In the hallway, she ran into Dr. Pym. He was carrying a basketball.

“How’s life treating you, Laura?” he said. He always asked her this. When he saw her—which he always did in the morning or the evening—he always acted as if he hadn’t seen her for a week.

“It is fine,” she said.

“That’s good.” He smiled. Around her he tried to be cheerful.

Ever since she’d killed Briggs, people had gone out of their way for her. Then, after her meltdown at the football game, everyone politely avoided her. People thought she was crazy. But Dr. Pym treated her the way he always had. She knew that the other kids thought he was a little awkward. He always said cheesy things like, “Is it hot enough for you?” Or, if they were playing team sports, “Go for the gold.”

Now he waited for her to say something more. When she didn’t, he smiled some more. “Are you heading to the pool for a swim?”

She hesitated. She had spent the day thinking about Daken’s request for an appointment. She hadn’t debated telling anyone, but now she felt her reservations rise to the surface. What if she just told him everything? _Daken is coming after me again. I’m afraid he may do something . . ._

She opened her mouth to say something but hesitated. In that moment, Ava and Hazmat strolled into the mouth of the hallway. They’d been chatting, but when they saw Laura and Dr. Pym they stopped talking and just stared. She remembered then that nothing was private, and no one was trustworthy.

“Laura?” Dr. Pym said.

“I have to go off campus this evening,” she said quietly, taking a step back. She wasn’t asking his permission, not really. When she had started at the Academy, she had made sure that she would be able to come and go as she pleased. Now that there was no real Academy left, she didn’t even know if she had to follow protocol at all.

“Okay,” he said, looking at her with a mixture of concern and curiosity. “Just be sure to sign out. Anything going on?”

“Nothing,” she said, turning away from him and slipping away in the same direction from which she’d come. If she had to, she’d take care of Daken by herself. It was better that way, better to not involve anyone else. 

***

But maybe she didn’t tell anyone for other reasons.

Maybe she didn’t tell anyone because it felt good to have a secret. This justification seemed like the only thing that made sense: She needed to have secrets again. She needed to stop giving herself away.

At Avengers Academy, she had already shared too much of herself. She should have known that disclosure led to vulnerability. Vulnerability had led to her involvement with Finesse, and involvement had led to her betrayal.

Finesse had said to her: “I did what I had to do. I can’t apologize for that.”

Finesse said: “I am sorry this has hurt you. But at least now you know the truth.”

About her, when she thought Laura wasn’t listening, Finesse said to Ava and Hazmat: “I don’t know what’s wrong with her. I don’t think anyone knows. She’s clearly very troubled. You should stay away from her.”

And that _—that._ That was what bothered Laura the most—that after everything that had happened between them, Finesse walked around and pretended that she hadn’t done anything wrong. Finesse was so fucking confident that Laura would never tell anybody, that she’d never confide in their teachers or tell their friends about her lie.

Worse was that Finesse was probably right.

That night Laura drove her motorcycle into the city. On the way, she listed possible scenarios and their outcomes. One: Daken would attack her first. He might even kill her. _I may die tonight_ , she thought as she rode along the freeway, the wind whipping her hair.

Two: he would attack her, and she would kill him. That was an equally possible scenario. And she did not want to kill him. Even after everything—after everything he’d done to her, to Logan—she didn’t want him to die again. 

***

She found him in the park.

He was sitting on a bench, just where he said he would be. He had one leg propped up on his knee and was leaning back on the bench staring at the fountain. His hair was longer than it had been before, and he was smoking a cigarette. She hadn’t known that he smoked.

She was standing on the other side of some bushes, careful that the wind didn’t carry her scent in his direction. He didn’t seem to know she was there. This gave her some time to size up the situation. She wished she’d been able to bring a gun from the Academy, but if she’d asked to check one out, then everyone would have wanted to know why. All of a sudden she missed her X-Force days, the days when she could get her hands on whatever weapon she wanted.

He didn’t seem tense or poised. His leg was propped up listlessly, and he seemed to fold into the bench. As she drew closer, she saw that he was thin and gaunt—weak-looking and tired. Perhaps he hadn’t quite beaten the cancer.

She didn’t trust that things were different—that _he_ was different—but she felt that he wasn’t going to kill her. He wasn’t even going to try.

She sidled up to him, her hands in her jacket pockets, clenched in tight fists.

He removed the cigarette from his lips and gave her a long sideways glance. Then he sneered. “Well look at you.”

She stared down at him. It was interesting, she thought—to be the one with all the strength.

“You came alone, I take it. Good girl.” He ran one hand through his hair and smiled. “Aren’t you going to sit down? Look, we have this lovely bench to ourselves, Laura.”

His voice was just as she remembered it. She was always told that it was easiest to forget a voice—that you forgot a person’s voice long before you forgot how he looked or smelled. But for her, this wasn’t the case. Daken’s voice sounded exactly as it had in her dreams—an unctuous baritone, coaxing and self-satisfied.

“Why are you here?” she said.

“The weather,” he said. “I miss it. And I miss _you_ , Laura.”

She continued to look down at him.

“And Logan kicked me out of New York.”

“Logan knows you’re alive?”

He laughed. “I guess you two don’t keep in touch.” Then he smiled again as if settling a personal bet.

“We talk, but not about you.”

“Bullshit.” He took a drag. “You’re just—you don’t matter to him. Not the way I do, anyway. But isn’t that just always the way? People prefer their sons, and I suppose Wolverine isn’t any different. Come now, sit here with me.” He patted the bench.

She shook her head. She would _not_ sit with him. “Why are you _here_ , Daken?”

“I told you,” he said. “I came to see you.” He adjusted his posture, sitting up straight. “Can’t a man visit his precious next-of-kin without catching shit?” He paused. “I’m not sick anymore, but I’m not quite well, either.” His glance flitted away and his smile faded. “But you know this already.”

“You’re still on the drugs,” she said.

“God no,” he said. “I’m not a prize idiot.” He took one last drag on his cigarette and then dropped it on the ground, stubbing it with his shoe. “But recovery _is_ a bitch. Say, do you believe in ghosts?”

She couldn’t tell if he really wanted her to answer the question. “Why?”

“Because if they’re real, and I die, I’m going to haunt you. Every fucking day of your life, Laura dear. Not dear old Dad—just you. Consider yourself special. Wolverine may not prefer you, but I do.” He smiled and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. After he took one he offered the pack to her.

She took a cigarette and held it, inspected it. “What did you do to this? Did you put something in it?”

His mood shifted. “Don’t flatter yourself, Laura dear. I have roofie fantasies about a great many people, but not about you.”

She still didn’t put the cigarette to her lips.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Daken said. He stood up and snatched the cigarette from her fingers and sat back down. “Christ on a fuckstick. These are French cigarettes, very expensive. Here.” He placed the cigarette between his own lips and flicked his lighter. Lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Happy now?” He exhaled, blowing the smoke between them. “Why the fuck so paranoid? I’ve never done you any real harm.”

“Your being here does harm.”

“You think I wouldn’t have already killed you if I wanted you dead?”

“Maybe you were busy trying to kill someone else.”

He leaned against the bench. “You’ve got a point.” He propped his elbow on the back of the bench. “Let me think. What can I do to make things right between us?”

“Go away,” she said. “Leave town.”

“Oh, I _will_ do that. Believe me, I will. But as for right now—” He pushed himself up from the bench. “How about a tea? And a nice dinner? And perhaps a nightcap?”

“Jesus, Daken. You’re sweating. Are you—” She thought he might pass out.

“I told you, I’m better, but I’m not quite well. Pretend I have a dying wish. And I need to tell you about it over dumplings.” 

***

 At the tea salon Daken ordered more dumplings than either of them could eat. He talked the entire time—but not about any dying wish. Chopsticks poised over his plate, he told Laura all about his previous adventures in Los Angeles and his bout with cancer. “I had it everywhere,” he told her. “Even in my colon. Trust me; you’ve never really lived until you’ve had it in your colon.”

Laura didn’t really care about Daken’s cancer. She hadn’t come with him to hear about his life or to serve as a captive audience to his stories.

She just wanted to know what he wanted with her. He didn’t seem to want to hurt her, but who knew? Something was different about him. Even though he looked basically the same, and even though he sounded basically the same, he seemed more transparent than she’d known him to be in the past. And his accent was different—flatter somehow, more American. Before, she’d detected a slight lilt to his speech, a tonal quality that you might miss if you weren’t listening hard enough. Daken, she figured, knew how to change an accent like he knew how to change his clothes. Either that or the cancer had altered something deep within him.

“You’re not even listening to me,” Daken said suddenly, staring at her.

Laura didn’t move. She had been listening, though perhaps not to the substance of what Daken had said. “I am listening.”

Daken slouched and tossed his napkin on the table. “Ah, who gives a shit anyway.” He cleared his throat and settled into the chair, his hands folded in front of him. He shifted his glance so that he was looking at everything else—the patrons, the window, the door. “How’s your tea?”

She took a sip of it. “It’s okay.”

Daken didn’t say anything. He looked at everything but her.

The moment became uncomfortable. Laura had endured awkward silences before—she’d been the cause of many of them—but this moment, she realized, was different. She didn’t have to tolerate this uncomfortable moment. If she wanted to leave, she could.

“I am going to leave,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

She started to gather her things, reaching for her wallet.

“Don’t bother,” he said. “It’s my treat.”

She slowly put her wallet back into her pocket. She shuffled into her jacket, but she didn’t get up from the table. “I don’t understand it, Daken. I don’t know why you summoned me here. The last time we saw each other, you had me bound and tortured.”

He didn’t blink. Then he smiled blandly. “You look good, you know. You look almost pretty. Much different from the last time I saw you.”

“The last time you saw me, I’d been in a box for three days. I would hope I look better now.”

“And you have something resembling a sense of humor. That’s good.” He raised his tea to his lips but didn’t drink it. “Henry Adams once said that people who study Greek must take pains with their dress. Do you know what he meant by that?”

She sat back in her chair.

“If you do something odious for a living, then you must strive to be someone who is nice to look at. Nice to smell. Pleasant to be around. Polite to small children and grandmothers. The maxim, though seemingly self-evident, is how I’ve made my way.”

“I’m glad for you.”

He smirked at her. “So what have _you_ been up to? Kill anyone lately?”

She tried not to tense but it was too late.

“Do you have a boyfriend now?” he asked.

When he said _boyfriend_ , his accent came back—just slightly. “No,” she said. And then she thought, _You know nothing about me_.

Daken settled the bill and walked out of the tea salon with her. In the darkening California evening, he stood on the sidewalk and lit another cigarette.

“I did not know you smoked,” Laura said, standing across from him, her hands in her pockets.

“We all have our secret vices,” he said. He held out the pack to her, and she shook her head.

Between them there was now a cloud, and Laura felt protected somehow. Older and more empowered. “Why did you do what you did to Wolverine?”

Daken exhaled, blowing his smoke to the right and away from them both. “You’ll have to be more specific. I’ve done a lot of things to Wolverine.”

“When you killed his children. What you did—it was horrible.”

“Ah.” He crossed his arms. “But I didn’t kill his children. He killed them. The man has no fucking control.”

“Stop. What you did was murder them. You might not have killed them physically, but you were responsible for their deaths. You used them. You had them killed.” _They were my family too_ , she wanted to say, but she knew he’d just laugh at her sentimentality. She wondered what they looked like. Logan hadn’t told her anything about it—she’d learned the details from Gambit, back when she and Gambit were still friends.

“It benefited me,” he said.

“What?”

“You asked me why I had them killed—why I had his dirty little secrets wiped off the planet. Because it benefited me. I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy it any more than you might. But it benefited me, and it benefited you too, Laura. You know that the fewer people who share our genetic features, the better. I did us both a favor.”

At that moment she imagined rising up in front of him and taking his life. She could simply straighten and reach for his hair. With one hand she could pull his hair toward her, and with the other she could cut off his head. He’d be dead before his body hit the sidewalk. And she could do it—she could definitely do it—he was weak, and he was slow.

But that was the thing. He was weak, and he seemed so defenseless. He wasn’t hurting her, and therefore she had no reason or justification for killing him. She knew the time would come when she’d have to kill again, but she didn’t want to start with Daken.

“I don’t want to see you again, Daken,” she said.

“You’re asking all the wrong questions.”

“What?”

“You’re asking me why I killed them.” He stepped past her and onto the curb. Looked left and then right. Then back at her. “Instead you should ask yourself: Why didn’t I kill you too?” He dropped his cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with his toe. “I’ll see you, Laura,” he said. And then he crossed the street.


	2. Chapter 2

II.

 

On the way back to the Academy, she tried not to think about Daken. _He’s not my problem_ , she thought. And apparently Logan already knew he was alive. Logan had kicked him out of New York.

Logan, it seemed, was always kicking everyone out of New York. _Not me, though_ , she thought. _Not technically_. Moving to Los Angeles had been her decision. But he certainly hadn’t fought her about it or urged her to stay.

She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about anything but the drive. She tried to keep her mind free of Finesse, of Daken, of Wolverine, of Jubilee. She always tried to avoid thinking about Jubilee.

But yes—there it was: the memory of Jubilee, and all the sadness it brought with it. Whenever she tried to ignore the memory, it came roaring back. Jubilee moving beneath her. Jubilee’s legs clamped around her waist. Jubilee’s breasts spilling from her bra. Jubilee smiling in the morning beneath the sheets, the two of them still awake in that moment before the sun lit the room.

They’d only made love half a dozen times—all during that weekend when they were both in New York for Northstar’s wedding—but the experience stayed with her. In her memory, each encounter seemed to lengthen and take on new meaning. The time that Jubilee sucked her lower lip while writhing beneath her seemed to testify to their shared satisfaction. Or the time Jubilee straddled her, laughing, was like a declaration of love.

But there had been no declaration of love.

And then Jubilee went back to her island, and Laura didn’t hear from her for a long time.

At first she sent Jubilee a lot of emails. They went unanswered. Then Laura stopped emailing as much, and started listening to the silence in her heart. _She’s with Raizo_ , Laura thought. She couldn’t help but assume the worst. And she was confused. Was she giving up on Jubilee too easily? She wanted to ask someone about it, anyone, but she didn’t know who. None of the kids at Avengers Academy were an option, and she immediately nixed the idea of asking Tigra. She didn’t want to involve Gambit—he might do something rash, like contact Jubilee himself, and that would make things worse. It was bad enough to get the cold shoulder while she was all alone; it would be worse to hear the news filtered through Gambit.

Then, in August, she got a postcard from Thailand. The picture was of a beach. She flipped it immediately and read it, but her mind processed only snippets. _I’m sorry, Laura . . . you know you mean a lot to me, but . . . what happened between us . . . I’m with Raizo now . . . It’s just easier to be with other vampires, and for everyone’s good, really . . . I don’t think I’ll be coming back to the States for the rest of the year . . ._

Laura couldn’t bring herself to throw the postcard away. It smelled like Jubilee, after all. Instead, she carried it around in her jeans pocket for a day until it felt like a wound. Then she crumpled it up and hid it at the bottom of her dresser drawer.

That was last summer. That was before everything bad started to happen to her: Briggs, Finesse’s betrayal, the football game, the end of the Academy. Jubilee’s postcard had been the beginning of all the bad things. Why couldn’t she understand how much Laura loved her, needed her? Why had she gone back to Raizo? 

But then Laura knew that she had been stupid to think that there had been anything permanent between her and Jubilee in the first place. The thing she’d had with Jubilee was weird; it was a close friendship that turned sexual during one intense weekend. Laura was the one who fell in love. Actually, she’d already been in love with Jubilee before the whole thing happened—Jubilee’s happiness, her hair, her pretty laugh.

Even now when Laura thought about her she couldn’t control her body’s reaction—the quickening of her heart, the stirring of too many unmanageable emotions. She pulled around to the side of Avengers Academy and climbed off her bike, removing her helmet and shaking her hair out. _You have a lot of hair_ , Jubilee had said to her one time, admiring.

 _A lot of straight hair_ , Laura had replied. She had preferred Jubilee’s hair to her own, just as she preferred Jubilee’s skin, nails, feet—everything, really.

Laura heard footsteps. She turned.

Dr. Pym was walking across the lawn. He waved to her from the darkness of the blank school grounds. While she waited for him to approach, she hooked her helmet to the handlebar.

“How was your drive?” he said when he got close enough.

“Good.” He wanted to continue the conversation they’d been having before. She turned to speak to him.

He stood facing her and smiled. His hands were in his pockets, and he didn’t have his mask on and Laura could see his features in the lights from the garden. She could almost make out the trail of light freckles across the bridge of his nose, the slight scruff of his five-o’-clock shadow. Dr. Pym was good-looking—maybe what most girls considered hot—but Laura didn’t think about him that way.

He always seemed to be around. When she’d first arrived at the Academy, Laura had wondered if he was watching her because she seemed likely to crack, to grow violent, or to run away. Now she wondered if his interest wasn’t different. Unseemly, maybe. Less-than-wholesome. Could that be possible? Was he that kind of person? And how could he not have heard the rumors about her and Finesse?

She had a momentary thought. _I could fuck him_. She could take him right there—coax him off to the woods, give him a blowjob. It would be nothing to her, it would feel like nothing. She’d certainly done worse, and with stranger and less upstanding men. But as soon as she had the thought it caught her off guard. Why would she think such a thing? And why would she do that?

For leverage, maybe. She’d have something to hold over his head. He’d never be rid of her. If he so much as tried to pass her back to the X-Men or send her home to Wolverine—or worse, let Captain American lock her away—she could just threaten to whisper about his impropriety.

She was thinking about surviving. She was thinking like—like _Daken._ Ever since Dr. Pym and Tigra and the others had dissolved the Academy, she’d wondered how long it would take them to boot her and all the former students all over again. If she had a chit on Pym, she could keep that from happening.

“It’s a beautiful evening,” Dr. Pym said, motioning to the school grounds. “A little cold, though. I guess winter’s coming.”

“It never gets very cold here.”

“Yes, well.” He stood with his hands in his pockets and continued to peer at her. “Are you okay?”

“Why would I not be?”

He shifted his weight, cleared his throat. “No reason. I just thought—you’ve seemed a little distracted lately. I haven’t seen you in the lab.”

The lab. It was her job to keep the lab clean and to take care of the animals. Lately she’d been slipping. She wondered if he’d ask someone else to take her job. Ava, perhaps. “I’m sorry about that. I’ll catch up on my work tomorrow.”

“No, no. That’s not my point. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay with everything that’s been going on. With, you know, the transition.”

Right. The transition from Avengers Academy to the Avengers Network of Philanthropic Foundations. One fake organization to the other. “I am happy about it.”

He shifted again as though sensing that pulling secrets from her would be no easy task. “When Wolverine was here a few weeks ago . . . I couldn’t help but notice that you had words with him. Is everything okay?”

He was talking about the football game between the Avengers Academy and the Jean Grey School—the game at which she’d discovered Finesse’s treachery—and “words” was putting it kindly. What she’d had with Wolverine was a full-out scene of epic proportions. What she’d done was legend-making stuff, highly embarrassing. People were still talking about it, and they’d be talking for a while. “Laura’s cray-cray,” Reptil said about her when he thought she couldn’t hear.

It all started when Finesse had made her confession to Laura—right there on the football field. Anyone could have heard, but no one did. Of course not. Finesse was far too clever. She knew how to spill secrets in just the right places—places where anyone could have heard but didn’t, places where Laura couldn’t lash out and hurt her. Even when making a confession, Finesse was far more calculating than contrite.

So Laura left. She just walked away from the game. Slipped off to the beach. Shook with rage and humiliation. She was hot all of a sudden—too hot. She kept walking toward the water. Then she walked into it until it reached her thighs. She sat down. She sat in the waves and let them crash over her. She’d been so hot with rage that she hadn’t flinched from the coldness.

She’d fought to keep herself there for as long as possible. The waves crashed on the shore and then the tide dragged them back out. She swallowed water. She inhaled it. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she stood. She understood what she had to do.

Dripping wet, she’d stalked from the beach to the courtyard and back to the house. She didn’t stop for anything.

Finesse had betrayed her. _She used me_ , Laura thought, over and over again _. She used me_. _I will kill her. She used me._ Finesse had been spending every night in Laura’s bed, and she’d never said anything. _Never again_ , Laura thought, and that _never again_ encompassed a great many things. She’d never sleep with Finesse ever again. She’d never get fucked over like this again, either. And she’d never get close to anyone, not ever again.

She pushed through the double doors and walked quickly down the hallway. In the TV room she found Quicksilver with Mettle and Mattie. He looked up at her when she walked into the room. “What the hell?”

“Where the fuck is Wolverine?”

His gaze flickered over her. In half a second, his expression changed from annoyance to alarm. “Upstairs,” he said quietly.

Mettle and Mattie exchanged a glance and Laura spun on her heals, moving fast in the direction of the stairs.

“Wait—” Quicksilver said, and suddenly he was at her side. “He’s busy right now. You can’t go up there!”

She pushed past him and bounded up the stairs, her boots and clothes waterlogged and squishing, her hair dripping into her eyes.

“Laura!” he said. He was beside her again. When he reached out to stop her, she took him by surprise. With one swift motion, she twisted his arm around his back and shoved him down the stairs. He hit with a thud—and she didn’t care. She’d hurt him, and she didn’t care. She was off again, off in the direction of the room with pounding music.

The music. The door. She’d have to force it open. She gathered her strength and hurled herself against it—it opened easily, it wasn’t locked—and suddenly she found herself standing in the middle of a room full of stunned and startled teachers. Someone might have gasped—she didn’t hear them, wasn’t paying attention. She only remembered that one moment it had been loud—voices and laughter and music—and in the next moment there had just been music.

“Jesus,” someone said.

The room was crowded. Dr. Pym, Kitty Pryde, Hawkeye, and Wolverine had been sitting at the table, a spread of cards between them. Kitty was wearing only a bra on top, and Hawkeye was also missing his shirt. Tigra sat in a chair off to the side, and Gambit was leaning against a window ledge, his stance relaxed, his shirt flapping open. He’d been smiling at Tigra, but now that smile dropped from his face.

She recognized it then: the distinct smell of marijuana. So this is what teachers did when they were off duty—they smoked pot and played strip poker—and she realized that she wasn’t really all that surprised, and then she realized that it didn’t matter. They could have been smoking a crack pipe for all she cared, or shooting heroin. She saw Tigra stub something out in her cup and spring to her feet. The teachers at the table had turned to look at her, and Kitty also rushed to get rid of an incriminating joint and slip her shirt back over her head.

“Shit,” someone said, someone different.

“Laura,” Tigra said, staggering to her feet. “Oh my God, what happened to you? You’re soaking wet.”

Someone cut the music.

“What the hell, X?” Wolverine said, and his voice rang out above everyone else’s. He stood at over the table and gave her the once-over. “Ever heard of knocking? And why the fuck are you all wet?”

She looked at him then—really looked at him—and he didn’t look away. She had so many things she’d wanted to say to him, so many questions and ill feelings bursting from inside her. But now she went blank. “I went in the ocean.”

“No shit,” he said. “You smell like seaweed.”

“Logan,” someone said.

“That water’s freezing,” Tigra said. “I told you guys not to go in there. It’s not the season for swimming. You’re shaking. Here, I’ll get you a towel.”

“That’s a dumbshit thing to do,” Wolverine said. “You know you aren’t supposed to go in the ocean. The adamantium’ll just make you sink, and the undertow’ll drag you out to sea. Jesus fuck, X. What’s gotten into you?”

“Alright, Logan,” Kitty said. “That’s enough.” She turned to Laura. “Laura, why don’t you and I go to the bathroom and get you cleaned up?”

Laura leveled a gaze at Kitty. “Fuck off.”

“Laura!”

Laura squared off with Wolverine. “I have to know something,” she said. Her hair was still dripping. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

He stood and waited. They all waited. “Well, what,” he said. “You barge in here ‘cause you got somethin’ to say? Well, say it already.”

She took a breath. Then she took another. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember what huge thought she’d formed before bursting into the room. It seemed to dissipate like the cloud of marijuana. So what she said was: “Was it all just bullshit?”

Wolverine just stared at her. “Huh?”

“What you said to me . . . was it all just bullshit?”

He shook his head quickly. “What are you talking about?”

She felt her breath go in and out. When she’d been in the ocean and tearing through the Academy, she’d felt powerful and in control. But now she was just as she’d always been: stuttering and inarticulate; irrational.

She took another breath and touched her hair. Stepped forward and then back. Tried one more time.

“When you said it would be okay,” she said. “That it would get better. You lied.”

He stood and stared at her, and there was a quiet feeling in the room, and no one moved.

Then Dr. Pym said to everyone else: “Okay people, let’s . . . let’s go downstairs.”

“When the fuck did I say all that?” Wolverine said.

And Laura opened her mouth again, but then there was a scuffle and everyone looked past her. She turned to see Quicksilver slumped against the doorway. “She dislocated my shoulder, I think.”

“What?” Wolverine said.

“Laura. She fucking threw me down the goddamn stairs.” He held his arm. “I tried to stop her from getting up here. I should have known not to get in the path of an oncoming Wolverine clone.”

Tigra looked between Quicksilver and Laura. “Laura, did you—”

“I’m sending you the hospital bill, Logan,” Quicksilver said. “I don’t have insurance, so it’ll be a doozy.”

“That’s your problem, Pietro,” Wolverine said, and Hawkeye said, “How do you not have insurance? We all have insurance. Isn’t it like, law?” And Quicksilver started to protest, and Wolverine raised his voice and told them all to shut up.

Wolverine looked at her again. “Now what the hell is this about, X?”

And Laura stood there, her hands in fists, her chest rising with each breath.

“Is this about that Briggs thing?” he said. “Because I talked to people about that, and they said it was a good kill. Justified. That you were protecting yourself and your friends.”

Laura started to shake again. Maybe it was the word _kill_ , maybe it was the word _friends_. She just couldn’t take it anymore. She turned away, threw up her arms and let out a noise that was a cross between a gasp and a groan. Pushing past Quicksilver, she darted out of the room and dashed down the hallway. Mettle and Reptil and Mattie and Hazmat were standing near the stairs. They parted to get out of her way.

She was outside in the courtyard before she heard the footsteps behind her. “ _Petite_ ,” Gambit called.

She ignored him, heading for the line of trees.

“Laura, wait up. I wanna talk to you.”

“Leave me alone.”

“C’mon, let’s blow this popsicle stand.” He was at her heals. “We’ll go into town and forget that this day ever happened.”

“You’re high, you can’t drive.”

“Then we’ll walk.”

She spun around. “I don’t want to go anywhere with you, Gambit. I want you to leave me alone.” Then she turned around again.

He didn’t stop trailing after her. “Ain’t gonna happen, _petite_.” Then, after a moment: “C’mon, honey, just tell me what’s bothering you.”

“You don’t _get it_ ,” Laura said, stopping abruptly and fighting the urge to push him the way she had Quicksilver. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

He stared at her as though he didn’t really believe her, and that he didn’t fault her for lying or for behaving the way she had. That was how he always disarmed her—by not reacting the way she thought he should. At that moment she could have told him everything. _Jubilee broke up with me. I tried to replace her with someone else . . . I know it was wrong, but I couldn’t help it, and now, now I’ve gotten what I deserve_. Who could understand that sort of human weakness better than Gambit?

Instead she told him: “Go fuck yourself.”

“Hey,” he said, and not altogether mildly. “I’m not some kid you can just tell off. So rather than make another scene, just calm down and tell me what happened.”

“Why?” she tossed out. “So you can think of me as another success? Another girl you helped while your own life goes nowhere?” She didn’t where she’d gotten that line—it seemed oddly rehearsed, something she’d heard or read somewhere. Or maybe it was what she’d secretly thought for a really long time.

“This ain’t about me,” he said.

“It’s always about you. At the end of the day you’re nobody—you’re fucking _nobody_. You just use me to look good to other people.”

He straightened. “I’m not nobody, _petite_. And I’ve never used you. If you think that our friendship is about using you to look good—”

“That’s exactly what it’s all about. From the first day it’s been bullshit. I’m just a favor you did for Storm. Then I was some girl you helped to impress Tyger. Now I’m just a card you can play to get with Tigra. Who’s not interested,” she added.

He stared at her for a long moment. Then he burst out laughing. “Tigra? Really? I mean, c’mon _petite_. Are you listening to yourself?” He laughed again, this time a little longer as though he was enjoying himself. “I mean, it’s just . . . _Tigra_?”

She felt hot all over again—humiliated. He was doing what everyone else did to her—alleging that she didn’t really know what went on between adults.

“I wish I’d never met you,” she said.

He sobered then. “I don’t believe you.”

“You’re third-rate,” she said, and now she really was just repeating something she’d heard—the trash-talking Avengers and students did when they thought no one was listening. “A D-list superhero. No one calls you to do anything, and that’s why you’ve got so much time on your hands to do whatever it is you do these days.”

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

She took a deep breath. “When I killed people—when I did bad things—I did it because I didn’t know any better,” she said. “You do whatever you want because you can. Because you’re not wanted. I hope I’m nothing like you.” She paused. “Go away from me.”

He tucked his hands in his pockets and stepped back. “Is that really what you want?”

“Go sleep with your stockbroker again. See if she’ll give you more insider trading info.”

“ _Hey_ ,” he said again, this time more sternly. “You’ve crossed the line. Yeah, I done some things I’m not proud of, but I’ve always owned ‘em. And things I told you—I did so in confidence. Because there was trust between us. Because we’ve _both_ fucked up, and I wanted you to see that there’s good an’ bad in all of us. So I don’t appreciate being blindsided like this.” He paused. “Not like this.”

“That’s your problem. You thought you could tell me anything and I wouldn’t judge you. You think you can be friends with children because most of them are stupid and don’t see through you. But I am not a child, Gambit. And I see who you are, and so do other people. You used up all your charm on the adults, and now you’re trying to use it on the kids. But it doesn’t matter. Everyone sees through you eventually.”

As she spoke, her heart sped up and her palms grew damp. She couldn’t help but feel powerful. There was something mightily thrilling about hurting someone with words. Words were like knives, a hundred knives you couldn’t see coming.

“You’re pathetic,” she finished.

He tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. “Those are strong words, Laura. What you’ve said—you sure you wanna stick with all this?”

“I have never said anything I didn’t mean. Unlike you, I am not ever insincere.”

“Okay,” he said, and he reached down to tuck in his shirt. “Okay.” He cleared his throat. “Ain’t never been insincere with you, _petite_. Remember that.”

He turned and walked away then.

She didn’t understand the full measure of what she’d done until much later. She’d hurt the only friend she had, and she did so just because she could. Because there was pleasure in hurting him.

For the rest of the weekend he kept his distance. More than that: he pretended that she didn’t exist. She saw him playing football with the boys and eating dinner with Juston and Ava. He didn’t seem all that wounded, not in the ways she thought he might. This both relieved and disappointed her. And she half expected—and maybe hoped—that he’d look up when she entered the room, that he’d give her some furtive, wistful glance. But he didn’t. He acted as though he’d forgotten she was alive.

She heard that Wolverine kept trying to pin her down to talk to her about what she’d said, but she managed to avoid him. She went out for long walks when she knew he wouldn't be busy. And she understood that his attempts to talk to her were halfhearted. If he’d wanted to talk to her, he would have found a way.

Then it was Sunday, and they all left. She made sure she wasn’t around to watch them leave—she pretended she had to go to the library to do schoolwork—but part of her was still surprised that no one reached out to her. No private summons, no text messages. All she accomplished that weekend—besides hurting Quicksilver and ending the best friendship she’d ever had—was to cement her reputation among her classmates as completely unhinged.

Now Dr. Pym was standing in front of her, and he wanted to know about it. He wanted to know if she was _okay_. No, he wanted more than that. He wanted an assurance that she wouldn’t crack again, at least not so spectacularly, so publicly.

“I was not myself that weekend,” she explained. She looked straight ahead at the glowing lights of the Academy.

“Just let me know if you need to talk,” he said.

She really didn’t want her team to be disbanded again. She didn’t want to leave this place, no matter how badly she’d been betrayed by Finesse or how little her teammates respected her. _Please don’t make me leave._ She couldn’t risk being on her own again—she knew what she might do. If they kicked them all out again, she’d have to go to the Savage Land by herself. Or back to Wolverine. She didn’t know which was worse.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I will not tell the other students that you and the teachers use marijuana.”

His expression flattened. “No, Laura. That’s—that’s not what I came to talk about.”

“I think most of the students know anyway.” She shrugged. “But I will not confirm the rumors.”

“Look, we weren’t—I wasn’t—”

She stepped toward him. Looked up at him and held her breath. She knew what she had to do. “Your secret’s safe with me.” Reaching out one hand, she touched his arm.

He didn’t step back, but he didn’t step toward her either. And they stood there together, staring at each other, the moment stretching into discomfort.

He dropped his arm, but he didn’t move away.

She was the one who broke the silence. She stepped back and said, “I will see you in the lab tomorrow.”

He cleared his throat and set himself in the direction of the building. “Good.” He walked back in the direction of the school, leaving her next to her motorcycle.


	3. Chapter 3

III.

 

The next day she did her tasks and tried not to think about the night before. Did Dr. Pym know what she’d been trying to do? Were her motives so transparent? Perhaps he thought she was just some girl with a crush. And the fact that he hadn’t moved away certainly pointed to _something_ —maybe he was more open to things than he let on.

She didn’t even think about Daken. That is, not until she logged onto the internet to find that someone had left a message on her Facebook. _On her wall_. (No one had written on her wall in a very long time.) The message was from Lester something-or-other, and it was nothing more than a phone number.

Her heart pounding in her fingertips, she poised the cursor over the delete button. Then she stopped. On second thought, she got her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed the number.

“Hello?” Daken said.

Laura looked around, making sure that no one was secretly camping out in the computer lab. “Are you crazy?”

“Completely fucking batshit,” Daken said. “Who is this?”

“Why are you leaving messages on my Facebook?”

“Nice to hear from you too, Laura.” He chuckled. “Now I’ve got your number.”

“Anyone could see that you’ve contacted me.”

Daken made a noise that sounded like a yawn. “I don’t care. Besides, it doesn’t seem like anyone’s surfed into your Facebook in a long time. Am I right about that?”

“What do you want, Daken?”

“Dancing.”

“What?”

“I want us to go _dancing_ ,” he said, this time very slowly as if he was speaking to someone for whom English was a second language. “Tonight. I’ll text you the time and place.”

“No, Daken. I can’t go dancing with you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Why do you care? I am not coming.”

Daken laughed again. “All those Facebook friends, and all so lonesome. Just wear something slutty. No—not so slutty. Just moderately slutty. I’ll see you when I see you.” He hung up the phone.

Laura put her phone down. He wanted her to go dancing. She hadn’t been dancing in a while—not since she’d been with Finesse—but dancing reminded her of Jubilee more than Finesse. Jubilee had taught her how to dance, which hadn’t taken long at all. Laura was good at learning complex tasks, and even Jubilee marveled at how quickly Laura developed a repertoire of moves.

So when Laura hooked up with Finesse, she decided to teach Finesse how to dance just as Jubilee had taught her. It was an act of nostalgia more than anything else; she had hoped, deep down inside, that teaching someone else to dance would make her feel complete again. It didn’t. Finesse learned to dance even more quickly than Laura had . . . but she lacked the ability to improvise. She pursued dancing the way she pursued everything else, sex included—with joyless vigor.

But these thoughts were perhaps ungenerous. With Finesse, things had been good at first. Finesse had been the one who had accepted her, no questions asked. And she was an astute observer of all things that went on at the Academy. She knew which teachers to avoid in the morning and which to ask for special favors. She also had Quicksilver’s ear, an advantage when they were trying to extend their curfew.

Initially Finesse had seemed to possess _all_ the answers, and Laura found herself cast in a familiar role—that of apprentice. Previously, whenever Laura became friends with anyone—Cessily, Gambit, or Jubilee—she humbled herself, made herself pliable and teachable. She was the lab girl, the experiment, the alien who’d been dropped in a foreign world of strange customs. She always needed a translator, a friendly interpreter who could demystify the world of the human heart.

She complied with people by making herself seem as blank as possible. It was how people liked her best—trying hard but never succeeding. She was a strange being, a girl who never quite _got it_ , and therein dwelled her charm. When she fucked up people found it predictable—and perhaps comforting in its predictability. _That’s Laura for you_ , they’d say.

This dynamic had its advantages—she always knew what role she was supposed to play. Her relationships with people had a certain balance, even if that balance was essentially skewed in the other person’s favor.

With Finesse she fell into the familiar pattern. From the first day she’d been at the Academy, Finesse had taken the upper hand—first guiding her to her room, then to the cafeteria, and then to the library. “This is your carrel,” Finesse said, gesturing to a desk next to the window.

“I won’t need it,” Laura said.

Finesse gave her a questioning look.

Laura felt a need to explain. “I’m not here to study traditional subjects. I already have enough credits for a high school diploma. I earned them at my last school.”

“But we _all_ study together. And besides, it’s the best desk in the entire library,” Finesse said, her tone steady and unemotional. “I secured it for you. I had to promise something to Striker.”

Laura said, “Oh.” Looking back on it, perhaps she should have asked why Finesse wanted her to have the best carrel in the library. Or maybe she should have told Finesse to give Striker his desk back.

“My desk is right here,” Finesse said, pointing to the next carrel. “I’ll be answering whatever questions you have. I’m your guide here.”

“Did they assign you to me?”

“When I was told about your specific issues, I volunteered because I thought I might be able to give you some insights.” She paused. “I suspect you have already angered Jenny. _Hazmat_ , I mean.”

Laura blinked at her. “How did you know?”

“I overheard her expressing her dissatisfaction with Mettle’s behavior. Don’t worry about it. She grows irrationally angry when anyone talks to her boyfriend. She believes we’re all trying to steal him. As I said, it is an irrational belief.” She gave Laura a long look. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

Laura shook her head. “Do you?”

Finesse also shook her head. “I find relationships difficult to navigate. Strange in their intensity, and yet containing a certain number of unbreakable yet inexplicable rules.”

“Boys are strange, and girls become stranger still when they associate with them.”

Finesse nodded, her eyes sharpening in recognition. “All reasoning goes out the window. Crying one moment, angry the next. And willing to forgo a sense of dignity in order to maintain the relationship.”

Laura remembered the way she’d been with Julian—she had a brief flash of one of the many times she’d cut herself because it seemed he’d never love her back. She couldn’t believe she’d once been a person to open her veins over Julian Keller. She didn’t tell Finesse, and it was nice to be able to omit the embarrassing things from her past. “You should have seen the girls at my last school. They were more territorial than Hazmat.”

Finesse’s gaze was intense but not unfriendly. She almost seemed to smile. “You’ll have to tell me all about it. We have time.” 

***

When Laura looked back on everything, she wondered if her mistake had been to take control. When Finesse had been the one with the answers, their friendship had made sense. But then things turned, and Laura had been the one with all the knowledge. Or so she’d thought.

All during that summer, when the X-Men had fought the Avengers, Finesse had given her calm, evenhanded advice. She knew just how to make a case, how explore both sides of an argument, and how to dissect one by noting its assumptions. Her reasoning was clean, and her way of speaking was terse, if not economical. Finesse knew how not to waste words, and Laura appreciated that kind of thriftiness.

Laura enjoyed their friendship—even if Jubilee was the person she thought of most.

Then Jubilee sent the postcard, and everything changed.

Laura spent the first day wandering the beach and the woods, the postcard folded up in her pocket. She cried when she was alone, and then she felt frustrated with her tears. What good were tears if Jubilee never saw them? If she could have just one minute with Jubilee, she might be able to plead her case. _You said that Raizo wasn’t even that good to you. You said you liked being with me._ If only she could have spoken with Jubilee, she could have applied a Finesse-like theorem: _First, we are right for each other. We have things in common, the same friends, and complementary strengths and limitations. Second, I love you. I love you more than anybody. Third, you love me too._

But _did_ Jubilee love her? When Laura realized that she had no concrete evidence, she began to cry a fresh round of tears. They’d had one weekend together— _one weekend_. Did Laura make more of it than she should have? She understood that this sort of thing happened: two people hooked up, and one of them assigned more meaning to the interaction than the other. Laura felt foolish—she’d never thought that such a thing would happen to her. Or: that she’d be the one to lose all perspective.

On the second day, she stayed in bed. She burrowed under the covers and cried into the sheets. She watched the sun streak through the blinds and light one side of the room, and then the other. She quietly sobbed at some points; at other times she grew exhausted enough to fall asleep.

Then there was a knock at her door. She didn’t answer. The doorknob turned and someone walked in. _Finesse_. She knew it was Finesse right away.

“Laura,” Finesse said. “Are you alright? You missed breakfast. And lunch.”

Laura rolled over, one arm in front of her face. She could see Finesse through the web of her hair. “I’m not well.”

“Shall I get the nurse?”

Laura shook her head.

Finesse stepped forward tentatively, as though she was afraid that Laura might lunge. She placed a brownie on Laura’s night table. “Perhaps you’ll feel well enough to come to the beach tomorrow. Remember we were going to go today? I waited for you.”

Laura said, “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Finesse said, but it was difficult for Laura to tell if she was offended or not.

And then Finesse was gone.

All that day: Finesse was the only one that checked on her. 

***

The next day she decided to get out of bed. Staying there just seemed pointless; she was already tired of her own grief and lethargy. She couldn’t bring herself to shower, though. Or to put on decent clothes. She pulled on an old sweatshirt and went to the lab.

Dr. Pym greeted her and asked if she was well. She acknowledged him with a nod so as not to encourage further conversation. She didn’t want to talk.

The day passed in a blur. She felt both overly sensitive to sound and dulled by its predictability. Everyone at the Academy was always so noisy, so exuberant. She cut the day short and went back to her room. Finesse knocked on the door and Laura told her it was okay to come in.

Finesse studied her. “I’m glad you’re well now,” she said.

Laura pretended not to notice the way Finesse was sizing her up. “Thanks,” she said, paging through a magazine. “I feel better.”

Finesse’s eyes seemed to brighten for a moment. “Then perhaps we could go to the beach tomorrow to study.”

“I have to catch up on work in the lab,” Laura said.  She did not, among other things, like to study. “Maybe in the afternoon?”

“The UV index will be at its highest then. I’ll bring an umbrella. And colas.” She seemed oddly excited. Laura didn’t really understand why—they’d gone to the beach together a dozen times.

Maybe then, even then, Finesse knew what Laura was thinking before Laura thought of it herself. When Laura looked back on it, she often wondered if that was the case—if she’d misread the situation completely. Maybe Finesse had always known what Laura was up to. Maybe she’d always had the control.

So the next day they went together. Finesse perched the umbrella in the sand, took out her books, and started studying. Laura took out a magazine—a trashy one. Trashy magazines were something that Jubilee had gotten her hooked on. Initially, she hadn’t really cared about which celebrities were getting divorced or which had been seen going to rehab—but it comforted her to know that Jubilee was somewhere reading the same article. Now her interest in celebrities had taken on a life of its own. She still didn’t find herself _caring_ —not really—but celebrities’ lives seemed oddly reassuring. They were always worse than her own.

Finesse eyed Laura’s magazine, but she didn’t say anything. She’d already asked Laura multiple times if she planned to go back to school—a question to which Laura refused to give a straightforward answer. She’d say, “Maybe.” Or: “If I choose a career that requires it.” But she already knew that she’d never do anything other than offer her skills to different superhuman groups, so it seemed pointless to speculate.

Today she decided to be generous. She decided to ask Finesse what she was studying.

Finesse showed her the text. It was written in Latin. “It’s about the Gallic War.”

“Oh.” Laura licked her lips. Caesar’s battle tactics. It reminded her of books her mother had read to her when she was a child.

“Would you like to see it?”

“No, thank you.” Laura wondered if Finesse would run out of things to study, or if she’d ever decide to take a break from learning. Laura had no problems learning things, but she didn’t share Finesse’s single-minded obsession with scholarship. She could commit vast amounts of knowledge to memory, but she didn’t feel intrinsically motivated to. Learning felt immaterial somehow, or a distraction from what she wanted to think about.

But what did she really want to think about? In the past that answer had been readily available to her: the world, and her role in it. And then: Jubilee. Even now, when she closed her eyes, she thought only of Jubilee.

She needed to think about something else. “Tell me about your book,” she said to Finesse.

Finesse started talking.

And she kept talking. She gave Laura an outline of the book. Then she gave a summary of its chapters.

And that was when Laura decided to wrench something out of the moment. Finesse was staring straight ahead and speaking, her chin tilted upwards, her eyes squinting. And she spoke like she was defending a thesis. So Laura leaned over and kissed her on the side of the mouth. And then she pulled away again and stared at the ocean.

“Why did you do that?” Finesse asked.

“I don’t know.” Laura glanced at Finesse out of the corner of her eye. “Did you find it strange?”

“I have been kissed before.”

“I mean . . .” Laura gestured to the space between them. “Did you mind?”

Finesse looked down at her legs. “No,” she said again, this time very quietly.

“Then you wouldn’t mind if . . .”

Finesse looked up slightly but still kept her chin tilted downward. She tilted her face toward Laura and licked her lips.

Laura leaned forward again. This time her kiss was longer, deeper. She touched Finesse’s shoulder. Then she eased her back onto the blanket. To her surprise, Finesse complied without much prompting. She relaxed against the ground, but her heart rate sped up. She began to take small breaths.

Laura ran her fingers through Finesse’s hair as they kissed, and Finesse seemed to like that. But when Laura’s hand grazed Finesse’s right breast, Finesse tensed. Laura could feel her arousal mix with trepidation.

She broke the kiss, leaned back and took her hand away. “I’m sorry.”

Finesse sat up, bending her knees slightly and hooking her arms around them. “You were going to try to have sex with me.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, not accusatory or shocked or upset. Then again, Laura wondered if Finesse was capable of conveying a tone of shock or dismay.

“No,” she said. “I wasn’t.” She looked around them. They were alone, yes, but they were on the beach. Anyone could see them. Perhaps someone already had. And she wasn’t sure if she wanted to have sex with Finesse anyway. She hadn’t planned on it.  
  
“It’s all right,” Finesse said. “I enjoyed what you were doing to me, the way you touched me. I just—” She looked at Laura out of the corner of her eye.

“You don’t want to have sex. It’s okay.”

“I’ve never had sex before.”

Laura had figured as much, but she didn’t want to say anything.

“But you have,” Finesse said. “How many people have you been with?”

It was a question Laura hadn’t been expecting. She felt her insides flare with resentment. Jubilee had never asked such a question. Then again, Jubilee hadn’t been a virgin; sex hadn’t been some mystery to her, some aching and invisible prospect.

Laura wished that she was a virgin. Or rather, she wished that she’d gotten to be a virgin when she met Jubilee. “A lot,” she said quietly. She sat forward, legs folded beneath her.

“When?” Finesse said.

Laura wondered if Finesse was deliberately trying to piss her off.

“When you were with the X-Men?”

“God no,” Laura said, realizing that Finesse was merely trying to assess the situation, to figure out whom she was dealing with. She was breaking every rule of etiquette, but it was because she was just didn’t know any better—and because she was nervous. Laura could smell her nervousness. “A long time ago. I was in New York then, but not with the X-Men.” She licked her lips and looked over at Finesse. “I didn’t want to. But I felt at the time that I had no choice.”

“Someone . . . forced you?”

She sat there, wondering. If only it had been that simple. “Finesse, I was a prostitute.”

There, the admission. The thing she’d always kept from her peers. Jubilee knew about it, but Jubilee hadn’t been a classmate.

“Please don’t tell anyone,” she said.

Finesse narrowed her eyes. “I will not,” she said, and she was telling the truth. “You were very young then.”

Laura felt sad then. She felt sad about Jubilee. She felt sad that she was not a virgin. “I was,” she said. She bent forward and pushed herself to her knees. Then she stood. “I was too young to understand that you do not have to do anything you don’t want to do. I myself did not know what I wanted. I did not think that my feelings were relevant, or that I had feelings to begin with. Therefore—” she brushed the sand off her pants—“if you do not want me touch you, I understand. You should not let anyone touch you unless you are a hundred percent sure it’s what you want.” She began to gather her things.

“Wait,” Finesse said. She also stood and began to take down the umbrella. “I’ll walk with you.”

Laura just wanted to be alone, but she waited for Finesse to pick up her book and the colas. She held Finesse’s bag for her as Finesse picked up the umbrella. Together, they trudged up the beach back in the direction of the Academy.

“Humberto believes that he and I are meant to be together,” Finesse said. “That it’s destiny. He saw it in the future.”

“What do you think?”

Finesse shrugged. “I would rather keep him as a sparring partner. I do not understand boys. They are very emotional sometimes.”

Laura didn’t say anything.

Finally they reached the Academy. Finesse leaned the umbrella against the wall of the porch, and Laura waited, though she didn’t want to. She wanted to just head back inside, go to her room, and think about everything.

Finesse stood next to her. Then, unexpectedly, she curled her fingers around Laura’s. “I would like to eat dinner with you,” Finesse said. 

***

Laura hadn’t been planning on going downtown to see what Daken wanted. That is, not until she overheard Reptil and Ava and Striker talking in the hallway. “Movie night, guys,” Reptil said. He rattled off the title of a film playing nearby.

“Ooh, I didn’t know that opened already!” Ava said. “Should we ask Ken and Jenny?”

“They don’t come to those things,” Striker said.

“They’re too busy coming on their own,” Reptil said under his breath, quiet enough that only Ava and Striker should have heard him.

“Oh my God,” Ava said. “Gross, Humberto.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“Let’s not ask Juston,” Striker said. “He’s such a pain in the ass. Remember last time he kept bitching about being on the aisle.”

“Should we ask Laura?”

Striker made a cross sound. “No.”

“Oh, come on Brandon,” Ava said.

“When I’m around her, I always feel like I’m about to lose control of my bowels,” Striker said.

Reptil laughed. “That wouldn’t be pleasant for any of us. Besides,” he continued, “if we ask her, we can’t ask Finesse.”

“Enough with Finesse already,” Ava said. “She’s just not into you.”

“No!” Reptil protested. “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant—you can’t have both of them in the same vicinity.”

“I don’t want either of them in the vicinity anyway,” Striker said. “C’mon, let’s ask Julie.”

As they passed by, Laura flattened herself against the wall of the computer lab. For a brief second she imagined stepping out from behind the door—scaring them all, or shaming them. Instead she let them pass.

She wondered why certain kids got to make the rules for everyone else—why they got to decide who was worth hanging out with, and who wasn’t worth the effort. Who sanctioned their behavior? Every school she’d been to had been the same—there were always those kids who designated themselves an indispensable set, and then there was everyone else. She had always been an “everyone else.” When she was involved with Finesse, she hadn’t cared that much. But now her outsider status seemed definitive and intractable.

She understood that such practices of inclusion and exclusion continued into adulthood. Wolverine was always an “in person,” as much as he didn’t really want to be. Cyclops had been an “in person” as well, before he flipped out and fucked everyone over. Gambit was a perpetual outsider, but he capitalized on his status, made it seem like a plus.

Laura decided once and for all that she didn’t much care for “in people.” They could all go fuck themselves, all of them—the Avengers, the X-Men, and all the stupid kids. And _that_ —that was her moment of weakness, the moment that drove her to her room where she picked out a short skirt, a tight knit top, and a pair of boots. That was the moment that drove her to Daken.

In front of her mirror, she combed her hair and parted it on the side. Then she put on some make-up. Grabbing her purse and her keys, she headed downstairs to the TV room to tell Quicksilver that she was going out.

He looked up from the TV and gave her a long and interested glance. Finesse was sitting next to him.

 _Good_ , she thought.

“Where are you going, might I ask?” Quicksilver said. He was more cautious around her since she’d thrown him down the stairs. She had apologized right after it had happened—and he’d never had to go to the hospital because Hawkeye had been able pop his shoulder back in its socket—but he hadn’t forgiven her. Afterwards everyone made fun of him, said he was getting slow in his old age.

“Just out,” she said. “I don’t know yet.”

“Meeting someone?”

Finesse leaned forward to peer at Laura. The glow of the TV lit up the side of her face.

“I’ll be back by curfew,” Laura said.

“Just be sure to sign out,” Quicksilver said, staring at the TV screen. 

***

Daken was sitting outside of a coffee shop reading a magazine. The sun was setting behind him. When he saw her, he looked up and sniffed. “I knew you’d come. I should have known you’d come dressed _like that_.”

She looked down at herself.

“When I said ‘moderately slutty,’ I meant college girl slutty, not East-side bottom bitch slutty. You look like a coke whore who’s been turned out of lowest rung of the porn industry. You try too hard, you know. You try too hard to be frightening.”

Laura pulled a chair out and sat down across from Daken. “Just be glad I’m here.”

He grinned. “Still trying to figure out my endgame?” He leaned back, tilting the chair back on two legs, his arms open. “This is my endgame. You and me. This city. _Our_ city. You know, ever since I’ve been back here, this place hasn’t bothered me as much. I like everything about it—even the fobby Asians and the flat-faced campesinos. And here we are, and there’s music and dancing, and the rainy season’s about to start—can you smell it?” He let his chair drop forward. “You’re fixable.”

“Excuse me?”

“We’ll get you some better shoes, a jacket. You’ll be presentable enough. Give me a minute.” He rose from the table.

She started to stand up too.

“No,” he said, waving her back down. “Just—hold on. Take off those boots. Here, give them to me.”

She felt so confused and disoriented that she complied. Daken’s manner was dizzying. The day before he’d seemed weighed down and lethargic. Now he seemed hyped up, strangely frenetic. Maybe the cancer had made him bipolar.

“Be right back,” he said, holding her boots. He smiled and spun on his heels and headed toward the intersection.

A minute passed. Then five. Then ten. She wondered what she looked like—a girl at an outdoor café in her stockings. How might explain this moment if anyone saw her? What would she say to Dr. Pym if he were here? To Wolverine? _I let Daken take my boots. He’s getting me new ones. He said I looked too slutty._

Just as she began to doubt that he would ever return, he did. As he approached, he held up a pair of strappy high heels. “Six and a half, right? For a small girl, you have very large feet.”

“Where are my boots?”

He handed her the shoes. “Just try those on.”

“My boots?”

“I’ll get them back for you later.”

She sniffed the shoes. “These belonged to someone else.”

“It’s late. Most stores down here are closed. I had to persuade a Thai vendor to even let me into his shithole of a consignment store. And then I had to sweeten the deal by giving him your boots in exchange. It was all a bit cruddy.”

She sniffed the shoes again. “I’ll say.”

“Please. Don’t get so squeamish. You’ve been living in filth since the day you were decanted.”

She put the shoes on the ground and started to step into them.

Daken made a noise of disgust. “You need to take those things off.” He motioned to her fishnets.

“Where?”

“Where do you think?”

She looked around. The sidewalk café wasn’t busy, but there were people.

“Again, awfully high-toned sentiments for someone who grew up in a glass cage.”

“Maybe I’ve changed since then,” she said. But she sat down and pushed down her stockings as discretely as possible. When she’d removed her stockings, she crumpled them and put them in her purse. Then she stepped into the shoes that Daken had given her.

“That’s—an improvement,” Daken said, but he didn’t seem so sure.

“Those were my boots.”

He chortled. “You’ll get them back.”

She didn’t know why she was going along with what Daken said. He certainly wasn’t making her do anything she didn’t really want to do—he wasn’t forcing her, or egging her on with his power. _Maybe I want this_ , she thought, moderately uneasy. Maybe she still secretly wanted someone to tell her what to do. All those months on her own, and what had she gained? She’d still ended up in this time, in this place. All roads seemed to lead to this crummy sidewalk café. 

 _No_ , she thought. It didn’t have to be that way. She still had a measure of control, even if she complied with Daken’s wishes. She was strong and he was weak; she could walk away any time she wanted. Or kill him.

“I thought we were going dancing,” she said. 

***

Daken located a nightclub right away. He had no trouble getting them past the line—“I told them you were a Saudi princess, and that I was your handler,” he said glibly—and then he handed her a pair of earplugs. “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I enjoy music more when it’s filtered through foam. Besides, I’d rather wait to blow my hearing out at a Guns N’ Roses reunion concert, Madison Square Garden. Not at this this place. Not for this bullshit reggaetón.”  

Even though Laura had never been to this particular club before, she recognized its atmosphere, and she felt comfortable. She had been to clubs like this with Jubilee—in Paris and New York and Los Angeles—and she had learned their rules and mores. She knew what to expect and how to behave.

“You want a drink?” Daken said.

“Not right now.” The music was thumping; she recognized it and liked it. “I want to dance.”

He smirked. “Go for it.”

He thought she didn’t really know how—that perhaps she was too self-conscious or awkward. Without giving him a second glance, she headed to dance floor with the other people and tossed her hair back.

Half a minute later, Daken was next to her, also dancing. He was watching her, and she could tell he was surprised.

She ignored him, deciding to do her own thing. She danced toward the speakers, confident he wouldn’t follow her. She tried not to think of Jubilee or Finesse—of anyone, really. And that was easy enough. Dancing—like any other physical activity—pulled her out of herself.

Some time passed, and she decided to head to the bar. Daken was already there. “Tired?” she asked him.

“What do you want to drink?”

She blinked.

“It’s on me, of course.”

“Jack and coke.”

He laughed and signaled to the bartender.

Later they were outside again. Daken suggested that they go somewhere else—“Not anywhere special, just to unwind”—but Laura had to get back to the Academy. She set off in the direction of where she’d left the motorcycle.

Daken remained at her side. “Where’d you learn to dance like that?” he said.

So the question had been nagging him. She shrugged. “It’s just something I picked up.”

“Not that you’re a great dancer,” he added. “And your taste in liquor absolutely sucks.”

“I danced circles around you.”

“Hmm.” Hands in his pockets, he peered into a storefront.

“My turn,” she said.

“We’re taking turns? We have turns now?”

“How do you always get people to do what you want?”

He gave her a pointed glance.

“I mean—” She paused, slowing down a bit. “I mean, I know about your—your ability. I’m asking—more generally.”

His expression relaxed into a grin. “Oh, that’s easy. Oral sex.”

She tried not to laugh.

“I don’t mean I blow everyone who has something I want,” he clarified. “I don’t. Actually, the best tactic is to avoid actual contact with people. Trading sex for a favor, or for money—anyone can do that. That’s amateur shit. The secret is to make the other person feel like they thought of it first—like they want you. And it’s best if they feel dirty about it—like, really burdened and filthy.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why, are you trying to edge out some Avenger’s wife? ‘Cause you could get a better sugar daddy than some . . . teacher.” He gave her a long once-over. “Trust me.”

“What do you mean?”

His eyes brightened. “You _are_ trying to fuck a teacher. Jesus. No wonder Logan sent you to California. You’re such a trollop.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Logan didn’t send me here.” It was important to establish that she hadn’t been sent away. Not like him. Not technically.

“I’m not judging you—not really. If I went to a school like that, I’d screw everyone, students and teachers alike. What, do you need a B in chemistry or something?”

She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. Suddenly he had the upper hand again. “My turn,” she said quietly.

He waited.

“Why did you do the drugs?”

“Easier still,” he said. “Because if you’ve ever done drugs yourself, you know that none of them really work.”

She did know this. When she lived in New York the first time—when she was a prostitute—she’d tried everything. She’d just wanted to escape from herself. Nothing had much effect. Heroin made her drowsy for only a few minutes. Meth didn’t make her feel anything at all. The only thing that made her feel anything was cutting herself.

“But you knew they were killing you,” she said.

“Addiction’s a disease,” he said simply.

Then he cut out in front her, walked backward a few paces, and stopped on the curb. He dropped himself into the street. “But this is the thing.” He looked at her, and his eyes were steely and hard. “I saw my mother.”

“Like, a hallucination?”

“You could say that.”

She had no reply.

“When you’re flirting with the possibility of communing with the one person who’s completely inaccessible to you, you’ll do anything. Anything at all, really. It’s the ghost of a memory that you’d kill to get back. Like Coleridge’s interrupted masterpiece, ‘Kubla Khan.’ Maybe you don’t know what that’s like yet. But you will.” He turned to look at the empty street. “I’ll see you when I see you, Laura.” Then he headed in the direction of his car. 

***

But she did know. She knew what it was like. She knew a lot more than he gave her credit for. She didn’t ever want to have to kill again, but deep down inside, she knew that she might kill someone if it meant spending one more weekend with Jubilee.

At Northstar’s wedding they danced. Laura drank more than she should have—even though she had a healing factor, she shouldn’t have drunk so much. She downed shots of tequila. She drank martinis. She felt dizzy and excited and emboldened. She and Jubilee were together by then—they’d spent the previous night together—and as they danced Laura wondered if it was possible to be happier or giddier or more unfettered. She’d never felt this way before.

After the reception, the wedding party moved to a bar. The adults sat or stood around three tables, drinking and laughing loudly. They had also forgotten themselves.

Laura and Jubilee stood in a corner not so far away from the adults. The crowd was waning, and Jubilee was standing in front of her, whispering something into her ear, giggling. Laura grabbed Jubilee’s arm and squeezed hard. “I want you.”

Jubilee’s eyes widened but she was still smiling. “Oh _really_?”

Laura nudged Jubilee forward and then took her by the hand.

They ended up in the bathroom on the other side of the bar. Laura pushed Jubilee into a stall and locked it behind them. Then she pressed her against the wall kissed her hard. Jubilee pushed back against Laura, but not so that she was resisting—not really. Instead, she pushed Laura’s shirt down and squeezed her breast.

Laura breathed hard into Jubilee’s mouth. Without breaking their kiss, she reached under Jubilee’s skirt and into her underpants. Jubilee arched her body to give Laura easier access. Then, in a move that only a former gymnast could manage without much fanfare, she pushed one foot against the wall of the stall for balance and wrapped a leg around Laura’s waist. Then she leaned back and hooked her other leg around Laura as well. And moaned as Laura leaned forward with her body and slipped two fingers into her.

Jubilee broke their kiss and gasped as Laura drove into her again. She clung to Laura and moaned lightly, her face tilted downward. Laura concentrated, gauging Jubilee’s rhythmic breathing, the scent of her arousal. She pressed harder and faster and Jubilee came with a shudder, letting out a high and half-stifled moan. Then she clung to Laura before putting one leg down, and then the other. They were kissing again.

Jubilee pulled back. Pushed her skirt down. “Laura,” she said quietly and full of wonder. “Why don’t you ever let me please you?”

Laura dropped her arm and stepped back a little. “What do you mean?”

“When we do this . . . you take over. Even when I try to—”she gestured to the space between them—“you beat me to it. You concentrate on me.”

Laura stood there in the half light, trying not to feel embarrassed.

“Oh Laura, I don’t mean—I don’t want to make you feel—here.” She nudged Laura against the wall. “Just relax,” she whispered, grinning playfully. Then she knelt in front of Laura and pushed up her skirt.

“Jubilee—”

“Shh,” Jubilee said. “Don’t think of anything. Don’t think of anything but how good this feels.”

She relaxed against the stall. It _did_ feel good, what Jubilee was doing. For a while she leaned back. Then, as her own arousal took over, she decided to trust it. She bent forward. Braced against Jubilee’s shoulders and ran her fingers through her hair. Her knees buckled. When she was close to coming, she didn’t care that she was in a public bathroom, that anyone could have walked in. She didn’t care about anything.

Afterwards they left the bar and went back to Central Park and watched as people took down Northstar’s reception tent. They sprawled out in the grass together, their arms entwined. They might have stayed there all night if Gambit hadn’t found them.

“Was wondering where you girls went,” he said, standing over them.

“Can’t you see we’re napping?” Jubilee said. “It’s been a long day.”

“You can’t spend the night here,” he said. He reached down and took Jubilee by the arm. “It’s not safe for young girls. Back to my place. Ain’t a far walk.”

The rest of the weekend was perfect. They stayed at Gambit’s place. They slept in the same bed. They made love when they wanted to and went out for ice cream at night. When Jubilee left on Monday to fly back home, Laura cried. She didn’t cry so much at the airport—she cried only a little as Jubilee walked past the gate and waved goodbye to them, her luggage under her arm.

She saved most of her tears for later. Gambit took her for pizza, and Laura sat at the back of the booth and wept. She picked at her pizza and wiped the tears from her eyes.

“Oh _petite_ ,” Gambit said as he watched her. He scooted around so that he was sitting next to her. Then he put his arm around her. “It’ll be okay.”

“What if her plane crashes?”

He laughed. “It won’t.”

“Can we check the flight path on your computer when we get home?”

“Sure. But it takes a long time to get to Asia. She’s probably not over the Rocky Mountains yet.” He squeezed her and stroked her hair. “You really love her. That’s good.”

But her mind was brimming with questions. When would she see Jubilee again? Would they stay together? They lived so far away from one another, so far it didn’t seem fair.

“I hate to be apart,” she said, bracing for a fresh onslaught of tears. She leaned against him.

“I know.”

“What if she forgets me?”

Gambit looked down at her. Then he laughed again. “You kidding? You’re a lot of things, _petite_ , but you ain’t forgettable.”

For all the ways he was right, he was also sometimes wrong—and after all was said and done, Laura didn’t quite know how to forgive him for it.


End file.
